As part of normal operation, a user equipment (UE) may need to collect a variety of measurements of the neighbor cells and their base stations within its reception range on a regular basis to help support operations such as handoff and tuning of signals, among others. According to certain protocols, such measurements are to be performed on specially designated reference signals. Thus it is advantageous for the UE to have more accurate information on the neighbor cell resource allocations and from the therein implied reference symbol locations to obtain improved acquisition of measurements.